2 out of 5

Label: Kowloon Records

Produced by: Francesco D’Abbraccio, Giovanni Ferliga

I appreciate that any kind of creative unit will have some development over the course of their career, and that checking in at two disparate points in that linearly-assessed line may not be “fair” – i.e. why do things at the start of this line look / sound so much different from the end – but nonetheless, while you can tell me that trio Aucan are and have been guided by “permanent crisis and continual refinement,” I can no longer spot the band that was in Stella Fisse, to an extent where it’s hard to consider it the same band. Or less wordily: what the hell happened?

And, I mean, what happened was an interest in gear beyond guitar, bass, and drums, which I know started directly after their badass instrumental rock debut album, but still, I’d expect something to link their sound from there to here, and instead… it’s all electro gloss, and garbled vocals. I suppose if there is a link, it’s a negative one, even, because when they kicked off this style some releases back, the songs started to feel very vacant – no human beings or personality behind them – and that’s now been fully extended to an entire album. This is what prevents me from getting on board with even assessing this as just a totally separate Aucan: listened to as light electronica, comedown music for late at night, it’s just so unemotional. There’s some burbling structure guiding the album, and that helps give its general shapelessness some relative peaks: Errors has a more direct, bouncy beat; Disto’s chilliness and treated vocals flashes forward to trends in pop hits several years after this came out; and Light Sequence is the brief psychedelic peak, whenever whatever we’re supposed to be thinking about draws conclusions. However, none of these sounds are especially new, and besides being a bit more focused, still lack that human element.

Perhaps this is guided by Aucan’s desire to perform their music wholly live, which maybe means no samples, or pre-recorded bits? And so maybe there’s an inherent limitation to how they compose, which is more indirect when you’re moving from instruments to electronics. I can’t say. What I can say is that this isn’t the band I started out loving, and the version they’ve become doesn’t inspire me. But if you started here, perhaps some roadblocks would be removed, and you’d have the opposite experience.